The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc by Goldstone Nancy

Author:Goldstone, Nancy [Goldstone, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780297863366
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIASCO AT PARIS—and it was a fiasco; only a disciplined, well-planned, sustained siege of the type Charles had no intention of engaging in could have taken the city—betrayed the precariousness of Joan’s relationship to the king. Charles was not the sort of person to shrug off humiliation lightly. Insults rankled; he nursed grudges; worse, he was extremely sensitive and suspicious of possible slurs against his dignity. The chronicler Georges Chastellain summed up the king’s principal character traits as “changeability, defiance, and above all, envy.” Up until the coronation at Reims, Charles, surrounded by advisers who believed in Joan’s godliness, had been protected by a cocoon of reassurance, but the scorn that had permeated the duke of Bedford’s letter of challenge showed him only too clearly how his patronage of and reliance on the Maid were regarded by those outside his own circle. Charles had managed to shrug this off at first, but after the dismal sortie against Paris the English regent’s barbs resonated with the king. Messengers from God were not supposed to lose.

To save himself further embarrassment, Charles separated Joan from the army. The duke of Alençon was sent home to his wife, while Joan was escorted to Bourges under the stewardship of Georges de la Trémoïlle’s half brother, the duke of Albret. With the decline in Joan’s fortunes came a corresponding reduction in the influence of Yolande’s party as well. La Trémoïlle was once again firmly in control at court, and he made it his business to see that the Maid of Orléans did not have an opportunity to regain her former glory. When later that year the duke of Alençon put together another force with the intent of evicting the English from Maine and Normandy, he wrote specifically to the king asking Charles to please send him Joan as he would be able to recruit far more soldiers were she present to lead the troops. But “Messire Regnault de Chartres, [and] the lord de la Trémoïlle . . . who at that time governed the King’s council and matters of war, would never consent, nor permit, nor suffer the Maid and the Duke of Alençon be together, and since then he has not been able to recover her,” wrote Perceval de Cagny, the duke of Alençon’s chronicler.

To distract Joan, in November 1429 La Trémoïlle sent her instead to besiege the town of La Charité-sur-Loire, about twenty miles east of Bourges, which had been captured by a local mercenary who had sided with the English (and who had, coincidentally, previously extorted a hefty ransom of 14,000 écus from La Trémoïlle). Joan was likely set up to fail; another chronicler reported that “the sire de la Trémoïlle sent Joan . . . in the depths of winter . . . with very few men, before the town of La Charité, and there they were for about a month and withdrew themselves shamefully without aid coming to them from inside and there lost bombards and artilleries.” Perceval de Cagny also commented on this aborted mission to La Charité.

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